Greater Expectations

The Company laid off my team's SSIS developer today.

She was notified on Tuesday that her last day would be Thursday, today. Though I'd seen it coming -- she was clearly not carrying her weight, and though I was hired on as a general .NET developer, I had been taking on her duties over the past few sprints -- it still seemed pretty fucked up for The Company to give her just two days to turn her life around.

I guess that's the risk of being a contractor; they can throw you back just as quickly as they reeled you in.

-

One of the reasons I left The Ex-Company earlier this year was because I felt a moral uneasiness being associated with an establishment that was seemingly so unethical to its worker bees. Promises were sold and subsequently retracted. Fellow employees were laid off or placed in uncompromising situations due in large part to management's own mishaps.

I wanted no part in that, and so I left.

Coming into the current Company, I had no expectations that they were anymore morally righteous. It is business after all.

Maybe for that reason, when I heard of the SSIS developer's short notice turnover, I was unaffected. Perhaps the world is predictable, and we are disappointed simply by our own expections.

Sort of like a girl who dates an asshole and expects him to be an asshole. When he's an asshole, she's content because that was her expectation, and in the rare cases that he's not an asshole, those moments seem even more alluring. And it may very well have been the case that she left a lesser asshole for this asshole because she expected the last asshole to not be an asshole, and he disappointed her.

Besides, this asshole probably has more money. Signs a bigger paycheck. And I feel no shame in saying: my silence can be bought.

-

We had a farewell team lunch for the SSIS developer at a Mexican restaurant, which was ironic because she practiced one of those religions that prohibited the consumption of most meats.

The lunch was mundane; guys talked to the guys they normally talk to about the subjects they normally talked about. Nobody seemed to pay much mind to the SSIS developer or spoke to her as if it were her last day.

Upon my departure from The Ex-Company, everyone inquired about my future, and contact information and networking referrals were exchanged. But none of that happened for the SSIS developer. I wasn't sure whether it was because everybody thought what I thought -- that without taking the time for some serious training, she was underqualified for this industry -- or whether it was her own introvertedness that dissuaded others from offering aid. Or maybe a combination of both.

At the end of the day, we shook hands and she simply went home.